Bills of resources are used in a variety of situations in order to insure that all of the resources necessary to perform certain tasks or procedures are available at the time that a procedure is to be performed. One of the simplest bills of resources would be a parts list for use during the assembly of an item. A more complex bill of resources might include a parts list as well as a list of required tools needed to complete the assembly of an item. For an extremely critical procedure, such as a medical operation, or the servicing of a vital component on an airplane or other piece of critical machinery, the bill of resources might well include parts, tools, equipment and labor resources required to perform the procedure.
In certain environments, similar procedures are conducted on a regular basis and, although the individuals performing the procedure may change or the procedure may vary slightly from one performance to the next, the necessary resources will be similar each time the procedure is performed. However, it is extremely likely that the resources allocated to the performance of the procedure from one time to the next will likely vary substantially based upon who is performing the procedure, variations in subjects of the procedure, when and where the procedure is performed, etc. Frequently, such variations in the bill of resources from each performance of the procedure will not reflect actual differing circumstances in the performance of the procedure, but will be a matter of habit, personal preference or even chance. However, it should be recognized that such variation adds costs and reduces efficiency. For example, such variation will likely require the stocking of multiple equivalent components in inventory which will tend to require the maintenance of a larger inventory and reduce discounts that might be received for bulk purchases of a single item. Furthermore, such variation reduces the accuracy of forecasts for required components, labor resources or equipment, since actual utilization will vary substantially from one performance to the next.
This problem is especially acute in the medical care field where substantial pressure is placed to reduce costs without compromising the quality of care. One trend is to move increasingly toward procedure based unitized delivery systems in which a large portion of the supplies used in medical procedure are provided in one container. These systems allow for hospitals, and other health care facilities, to order just the supplies needed at the time a procedure is scheduled. Thus, the hospital may reduce their inventory of stocked supplies, labor associated with pulling supplies for a procedure, and use just-in-time ordering techniques which help to reduce costs. However, these procedure based delivery systems have some drawbacks.
First, doctors are often very particular about the brand and style of medical supplies they use. For example, one doctor may prefer one brand of cautery pencil for his heart surgeries while a different doctor may prefer a different brand for the same surgery. Frequently, the number of doctor preferred items will be large, thus requiring either that a number of different bills of resources be used for a given procedure, or that the hospital stock all of the doctor preference items and that they be pulled from inventory prior to performance of the procedure. However, these solutions often negate the advantages of the unitized delivery system since the stocking of doctor preference items will serve to increase inventory and labor requirements and the increase of bills of resources will prevent the supplier from generating economy of scale savings based on volume in a given bill of resources.
Also, these procedure based unitized delivery systems do not address resource areas other than supplies. While supplies are a major component of a medical procedure, labor resources, reusable supplies and durable equipment are all important resources utilized in a medical procedure and their use should be analyzed and optimized.
Considerable cost savings in the medical and other fields could be realized if there were an automated and convenient method for analyzing and optimizing resource allocation and usage. For example, in the above example of doctor preferences in the same types of surgeries, it is known that doctors only express strong preferences with respect to a relatively small number of supplies. However, hospitals have typically used doctor preference cards as a whole bill of resources and, when given a choice, doctors will select a product with which they are familiar. Thus, there are often substantial chances to standardize or optimize preference cards for items about which doctors do not have strong preferences. Also, some doctors, because of a lack of historical information, will overbook other resources such as anesthesiologists, equipment, etc. just to make sure that the resource is available when needed; although, with good resource usage analysis, the doctor would be willing to standardize the scheduling of such resources.
The benefits of standardized bills of resources are varied and complex. With respect to supply standardization, enormous cost savings are available if supply consumption is standardized. The health care facility, supply distributor and manufacturers, when bills of resources are optimized, can benefit from inventory reduction, economies of scale, increased certainty in supply and demand, utilization of just-in-time manufacturing, shipping and inventory techniques, etc., because of the enhanced certainty of which supplies will be required. Furthermore, from the standpoint of the health care facility, the efficiency in the usage of labor and equipment resources can be increased by standardization by eliminating unproductive time and having a more certain knowledge of when labor and equipment resources will be required and used. Such knowledge will allow for more careful planning in the acquisition, training and utilization of such resources.
However, although the type and extent of possible benefits from standardization have been desired for some time, the problem has been so complex that standardization has taken place on a superficial and ad hoc basis, when even attempted. For example, some healthcare facilities have opted into group purchasing plans in which the group will negotiate with certain suppliers for certain types of supplies in order to get the best price. With respect to this type of solution, for the few products affected, the best price may be obtained. However, such solutions typically relate only to small groups or classes of supplies and do not take into account actual usage history, real doctor preferences, procedure specific requirements and certainly do not address labor, re-usable supplies and durable equipment resource utilization. There is simply no consistent, logical and proven method for the standardization of procedure based bills of resources.
The problem of bill of resource standardization and optimization is a complex one. For a relatively common procedure, such as a heart bypass operation, a vast number of different resources must be utilized. The list of medical supplies for the procedure runs many pages and a wide variety of labor and equipment resources must be brought together at just the right time. If the resources are expressed in mathematical terms, you get a problem with potentially hundreds of variables. Furthermore, each individual heart bypass procedure is a new mathematical problem with an equally large number of variables. Thus, simple and known analytical techniques are not readily adaptable to the problem of analyzing and optimizing bills of resources.
It is therefore and object of the present invention to provide a method for the analysis and optimization of bills of resources for a given procedure or procedures.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method for the standardization of bills of resources for a given procedure or across multiple procedures.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a method for the analysis of resource utilization for a given procedure or procedures.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a method for standardizing bills of materials to be used during a given procedure.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for optimizing a bill or bills of resources in medical procedures, including material, labor and equipment resources.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an integrated method for the optimization of labor allocation, supply ordering and delivery and equipment allocation in a healthcare facility on a procedural basis.